Meandering Thoughts: ESPN Brings Forth The Apocalypse

I was home sick from work today, which gave me the opportunity to watch some daytime television. In between trips to the bathroom, my television basically stayed glued to ESPN. It used to be that ESPN could be counted on provide some great sick-day programming; if it wasn't something decent like "SportsCenter" (which - despite its many misses and the fact that the show itself has become a series of commercials and sponsorships that has drained it of every single iota of journalistic credibility - can still be counted on for some mostly solid programming), it would be something awesome like "NFL Films Presents," which could leave you breathless after watching 1986 Buccaneers highlights for a half-hour.

However, what I beheld on ESPN - between the hours of 2:30 and 3:00 pm - was so very atrocious, so horrendous, so horrifying that I actually peeked out my living room window a couple of times to make sure that four horsemen were not stampeding down my street and that the apocalypse was not actually nigh. And while I'm still not actually sure this wasn't the case, I can say with some surety of what was actually occurring on my television.

The name of the show is "First and Ten," and the ESPN website describes it thusly: "With ESPN First Take's Jay Crawford and Dana Jacobson refereeing the always heated discussion, Skip Bayless and daily guests debate the top ten sports stories of the day from number ten to number one. In the show's first three segments, Skip and panel sound-off on each of the ten topics in a point-counterpoint debate. The final segment is "Extra Point" - the final word from all three on any sports issue they pick."

The show that I saw barely resembled that description. Yes, Dana Jacobsen and Skip Bayless were present. (Jay Crawford was apparently on vacation; the nondescript female talking head who assumed his place was possibly the least distinguished person to have graced the small screen at all. I couldn't tell you her name, or for that matter, anything else about her aside from her gender.) There was no "panel." Rather than having "daily guests," they had talking head/"sportswriter" Stephen A. Smith appearing. To call this show one of "discussion" and "debate" is like calling John Wayne Gacy "quirky." There was no discussion. There was no debate. There was a lot of screaming and posturing.

Why was this show atrocious? Let's look at the blustery talking heads at its Satanic core: Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless.

First, Stephen A. Smith. In the history of mankind, there has never been so much credit and credence given to someone who has so little credibility. Smith has been a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1994 - according to the paper's website, he has covered "Philadelphia 76ers, Temple University basketball and football, and college sports" and is now a columnist-at-large (which he began doing in 2003). Smith's lone other credit? Working for ESPN as a talking head, Smith has moved from commenting on basketball to a slew of other duties, including co-hosting SportsCenter and NBA Basketball coverage. ESPN even gave Smith his own television show, "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith," a talk show which gave a retroactive intelligence to "Thicke Of The Night" and "The Pat Sajak Show." ESPN banks on Smith as a personality - but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for this; Smith comes off on television as a belligerent, blustery ignoramus who makes up for content and reason by generally maintaining a vocal volume that seems better suited to amplifiers at a punk-rock show.

Then there's Skip Bayless. I do not know how ESPN executives looked at this person, and said, "hey, there's a guy we'd love to see representing us on a regular basis." He does not look good on television - facially, he resembles something akin to a wrinkly, harsh-faced Satan, if Satan were forced to suck on lemons on a regular basis. He makes very terrible points that make it seem less like he's a journalist considering a variety of topics and more like someone saddled with a case of utter incoherence matched with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He comes off not just as grumpy, but as an unlikeable person who would have no qualms about saying something like "Hitler had the right ideas but didn't go far enough."

Putting these two together is a terrible, terrible idea. Their personalities are grating enough, but the true difficulty with watching these two is the fact that they do not actually debate. They barely engage each other (hardly surprising, given their narcissistic tendencies). For a half-hour, they speak in absolutes. Which is a terrible, terrible thing when you consider that they are paid to talk about things that (1) haven't occurred yet, and (2) really require opinions and discussion. Neither entertains the possibility that the future sporting events that they're debating (today, it was the forthcoming NFL season and the New York Yankees) might deviate from the course set forth by their opinions.

The two of them went on and on about nothing. Smith "repeated" the "rumor" again and again that A-Rod is actually called "She-Rod" (as a Yankees fan who's heard just about everything, I have to say that I've never heard this one - it is more than plausible that Smith made this one up), and then went absolutely ballistic when Bayless called Terrell Owens "Team Obliterator." They literally only engaged each other about their made-up nicknames for athletes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these two are paid journalists! (Paid by multiple organizations, no less. Oy vey.)

Smith and Bayless are hardly the only individuals on television that do this; they're following a path forged by news channels like Fox and CNN, where journalists ranging from the quasi-likeable (I'm sure some name will come to me soon) to the blustery, Vader-esque (Robert Novak, Bill O'Reilly, everybody eles) insert their opinions into every single news story, obliterating the very concept of journalistic independence for the sake of ratings. However, Smith and Bayless have elevated meaningless, bad-for-our-society bluster to a new high in this - they suck the remaining drops of joy from sports, instead of contributing to our enjoyment of them. For that - although, surely, not that in and of itself - they should both be drawn, quartered, tarred, feathered, shivved, and shot.

And do it quick. Every time they "debate," those horsemen draw closer.